Marc Benioff Quotes

Selling cookies helped me to realize that you needed to have a certain way to communicate with people. You also needed business skills. You knew you needed to sell a certain amount of boxes, so that gave me some business sense.

It was easy for me in my bathrobe to provide really great customer service. As an introvert, it's really much easier to do than when standing in a retail store.

So much of life is a negotiation - so even if you're not in business, you have opportunities to practice all around you.

It's learning how to negotiate to keep both sides happy - whether it's for a multi-million dollar contract or just which show to watch on TV, that determines the quality and enjoyment of our lives.

I never went to college. But the structure I grew up with was planted so deep that when it came to doing business, I knew how to be disciplined, create teamwork, and persevere. It set me up to be an entrepreneur and a successful franchiser.

The best entrepreneurs I've ever met are all good communicators. It's perhaps one of the very few unifying factors.

I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don't hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales.

Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.

I'd like to think my strengths are in connecting with people and the relationship aspect of this business.

Most small business owners are not particularly sophisticated business people. That's not a criticism; they're passionate about cutting hair or cooking food, and that's why they got in the business, not because they have an MBA.

As any small business owner knows, starting a business is not glamorous work.

My career was always about working with people, and understanding issues and problems and helping them to solve those issues and problems. How you deal with people - that's what diplomacy is all about. So while I'm not a career diplomat, many of the skills I had seemed to directly translate into the diplomatic arena.

People who wish to go into the future should have two skills to succeed - the ability to deal with people and the ability to sell.

I'm a mediator by training and inclination.

That's probably a problem for some people in this business, they don't like to listen.

What do you need to succeed in business? You need the ability to think critically and communicate, and those things you can get just as easily out of a philosophy degree.

I do believe that in order to be a successful negotiator that as a diplomat, you have to be able to put yourself into the other person's shoes. Unless you can understand what is motivating them, you are never going to be able to figure out how to solve a particular problem.

I have a talent for dealing with difficult men.

My father was an entrepreneur - a sign maker, and he had about 20 employees - and often he'd take me to business meetings, and I would listen to him talk with his workers and customers. We would also talk a lot about business over dinner.

The ability to take another perspective has become one of the keys to both sales and non-sales selling. And the social science research on perspective-taking yields some important lessons for all of us.

Most people have no idea how to politely answer a phone. The English do, and it's been their only major business advantage for the past two centuries.

I think growing up in a big family taught me a lot of problem solving and how to share and compromise, and that's been helpful in my marriage.

I feel like I've always been a great mediator.

People are the core of every business. Businesses are based on relationships, and relationships are based on people. I would go to an average restaurant run by amazing people over an outstanding restaurant run by awful people.

I was a bartender for four years, and that was the best training that I had for learning how to approach people.